The continued growth and popularity of the Internet and World Wide Web has resulted in the availability of a vast amount of information to users. This has lead to an ever increasing demand from users for ways to easily search for, identify and retain the particular information in which they are interested without being overwhelmed by data, both solicited and unsolicited, that the user is not interested in. Typically, a user looking for information on a particular subject will navigate their Internet browser to a webpage for a search engine such as those offered by Yahoo!® or Google®. At the webpage, the user enters a search query (e.g., keywords or other text related to the subject in which they are interested) into a text box on the webpage (see FIGS. 1A and 1B) and that search query is sent by their browser to the server for the search engine. The search engine server performs the search and sends a webpage containing the results back to the user's browser. These results typically include a listing of hyperlinks for the webpages produced by the search and possibly additional information such as an excerpt of the text on the page which relates to the keywords entered by the user for the search (see FIGS. 1C and 1D). The search engine may also provide the option of conducting a search for images that relate to the user's search query. When such a search is conducted, the search engine server sends the user's browser a webpage which includes a display of the images resulting from the search and hyperlinks to the webpages that the images are from (see FIGS. 1E and 1F).
Frequently, in order to support the operation of the search engine, the search results also include “sponsored links,” which are typically hyperlinks to advertisers' webpages for products or services related to the search results. For example, a link to an advertiser's webpage may be displayed in conjunction with searches conducted on certain subjects or keywords chosen by the advertiser. The search engine provider is typically compensated by the advertiser when a user clicks on the advertiser's sponsored link to be directed to the advertiser's webpage. These sponsored links are typically “redirect links” which when clicked on, rather than directly sending the user to the advertiser's webpage, send a message from the user's browser back to the search engine server indicating that the redirect link has been clicked on by the user. The search engine server logs that the sponsored link has been clicked on (so that the advertiser can be billed for the “click-thru”) and then sends a message back the user's browser, redirecting it to the advertiser's webpage.
Some search engines, such as Google®, and software companies, such as Microsoft®, have developed “toolbars” which are software programs that may be installed directly onto a user's computer to enable searching to be conducted without first navigating to the search engine's webpage. These toolbars generally operate with the user's browser and provide an additional toolbar at the top of the browser's application window which contains a text box for entering search queries and a number of buttons to provide the various search functions. When a user enters a search query and presses a “search” button, the toolbar sends the query to the search engine server which responds by sending back a webpage of search results just as if the user had entered a query through the search engine's webpage (see FIG. 1G).
Another search toolbar, by GIRAFA™, occupies a vertical area on the side of the browser space and operates with a variety of search engines. When a user submits a query, the webpage listing search results from the selected search engine is displayed in the main browser area and the GIRAFA™ search tool bar area displays a thumbnail image of the webpages of each of the search results. These thumbnail images are retrieved from a thumbnail index maintained on a GIRAFA™ server (see FIG. 1H). Apparently, the GIRAFA™ index of thumbnail images is periodically updated by “crawling” the web. GIRAFA™' s website provides an interface for individuals to submit URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) which GIRAFA™ will index and add to their central index of thumbnail images. As a result, when a user navigates to a webpage by clicking on the thumbnail image, the webpage may appear different than the thumbnail image because the thumbnail was taken at some indeterminate point in the past (see FIG. 1I).
Some search toolbars and browsers include a feature commonly referred to as a “pop-up blocker.” “Pop-ups” are additional windows (frequently advertisements) that are opened on a user's computer screen (either on top of or beneath the current browser window) by code or instructions from the webpage that the user is currently viewing or has recently viewed. These pop-ups are usually not solicited by the user but are opened by a webpage to which the user has navigated for another purpose. A pop-up blocker prevents such windows from being opened on a user's screen without permission.
Currently, there are a number of drawbacks to the search toolbars presently in use. For example, while allowing a search to be launched from the toolbar area, the results of the search are shown as text in the webpage area, not in the toolbar. Also, the thumbnail screenshots presented by the Girafa toolbar may be misleading regarding the webpage's current appearance because the webpage may have been updated since Girafa last stored a thumbnail of it in its central index. Moreover, the actual web pages of the individual results are not loading on the user's computer; therefore slowing the process of reviewing the information available on those sites. Furthermore, although the pop-up blocker functionality of these toolbars may provide an audio or visual cue that a pop-up has been blocked (e.g., a beep or a flashing mouse cursor), the user cannot see what was actually blocked from appearing and cannot restore the blocked pop-up if the user realizes he did not want it blocked.